1. Field of the Invention
Applicant's invention relates to vending machines.
2. Background Information
Presently, there is a need for an effective dispensing or vending machine which is useful, particularly for dispensing single copies of newspapers. At the same time, there is a need for such machines which accept other than cash so as to alleviate problems of theft.
It is common knowledge that present day newspaper vending "racks" allow access to complete inventories of newspapers each time a purchaser inserts the necessary coinage for purchasing a single newspaper. Collectively, newspaper publishers in this country lose millions of dollars each year to persons who access the newspaper inventories by, in many cases, inserting a single quarter, and who take, in some cases, the entire inventory for resale, to accumulate valuable coupons, as a teenage prank, or any number of other reasons.
It is also common knowledge that theft of coins from newspaper vending machines (or even of the entire machines themselves for later access to the coins) presents an additional serious problem for newspaper publishers. Not only is the revenue from newspaper sales lost, but the dispensing machines are themselves either damaged or lost altogether.
Further still, given the consumer access to complete newspaper inventory at each purchase, combined with the cash-only tender used with the machines, publishers are wholly at the mercy of their route collectors to honestly report and submit to the publisher the actual revenues found in the racks. It is far too easy to simply claim that someone "must have taken all the papers with just one quarter".